Omaha is a drama from director Cole Webley that premiered at last year's Sundance Film Festival. The feature is about a father (John Magaro), who takes his two children, Ella (Molly Belle Wright) and Charlie (Wyatt Solis), on a road trip across the United States after they lose their home. Greenwich Entertainment released the film in the US on April 24th of this year.
Omaha was shot by Paul Meyers and edited by Jai Shukla. Shukla has been a collaborator with Webley for more than 15 years, and says the goal in cutting
Omaha was to make the viewer feel as immersed in the cross-country journey as possible.
“Omaha is a film that is not overly edited,” Shukla notes. “For us, not cutting away was more important than anything. As an editor, I try to first bring objectivity to the story. I know the script, but I also don’t rely on it completely. Helping the audience experience the performance of John Magaro, Molly Belle Wright and Wyatt Solis through lingering observation was paramount. When a film works and the audience is reacting at the right moments, that’s a great feeling.”
Shukla and Webley have collaborated on numerous commercials and a few narrative short films in the past, going back as far as 2010.
“My first commercial was with Cole back in 2010,” Shukla recalls. “Our goal was always to do a feature together! We’d often talk about it, and when Cole sent me the script for Omaha, I knew it was the one. The script immediately resonated with me. It was powerful, emotionally charged and had all the elements that would make for an emotional story that tied our creative strengths together.”
The two have developed a creative shorthand over the years, and when they’re in the editing room, Shukla says there’s a sense of openness and trust, allowing ideas to flow freely.
“Whether it’s a text or a call, we’re always in touch, bouncing ideas back and forth until we feel the story is as tight and impactful as it can be,” says the editor. “It’s been an incredible experience – not only because it’s our first feature together, but because of the creative partnership that continues to grow with every project we take on.”
Shukla cut the feature on an Avid system and says the raw performances of the young actors are among the film’s highlights.
“With those moments, you don’t get endless takes,” he explains. “In many cases we are down to the very last frame of what we wanted to use. It’s in these moments it felt like Cole and I were surgeons — extracting the most careful nuanced performances down to the very frame. The performances in these moments are so powerful we felt it our duty to preserve them as much as we could and let the character do the talking, not the edit points. It might not sound like editing, but editing is curation. And to be able to curate and keep those moments as pure as possible was the spirit of this film.”